The Semite, like the Aryan, is a myth, and part of the same mythology. Both terms-Semite and Aryan-originated in the same way, and suffered the same misuse at the same hands.Primarily linguistic, they date from the great development of scientific philology during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when European scholars made the momentous discovery that the languages of mankind were related to one another and -- formed recognizable families. The term Aryan, of Indian origin, was first applied to a group of languages spoken in south Asia, to which Sanskrit and its derivatives belonged, and then extended to a larger group of languages in Europe and Asia, more commonly known as Indo-European. Semitic was applied at about the same time to another family of languages including Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, and, later, some other languages of the Middle East and North Africa. The name of course comes from Shem, one of the three, sons of Noah, from whom, according to the Book of Genesis, the Jews and most of their ancient neighbors were descended.

Though these terms were strictly linguistic in origin and use, nevertheless confusion between language and race seems to have appeared at quite an early date. Scholars did in fact speak of Semites, but as a convenient shorthand for people speaking a Semitic language and having a culture expressed in a Semitic language. In this sense -- of the speakers of a language, the carriers of a culture, "Semite" was frequently and respectably used as a substantive. Scholars have never failed to point out -- repeatedly and alas ineffectually -- that this linguistic and cultural classification has nothing to do with the anthropological classification of race, and that there is no reason whatever to assume that people who speak the same language are of the same racial origin. Indeed, if one looks at the speakers of Hebrew and of Arabic at the present time -- not to mention English -- such an assumption is palpably absurd. Speakers of Arabic include the racially highly diverse peoples of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq on the one hand, and of the Sudan and North Africa on the other; and even the small state of Israel, after the "ingathering of the exiles" from all over the world, shows a diversity of racial type even greater than that of the Arab world. One may call the Arabs and Israelis fellow-Semites in the sense that both speak Semitic languages, and that is all. To assume or imply any further content would be rather as if one were to describe the English and, say, the Bengalis as fellow-Aryans, and to suggest that they have some common identity because of that. Racialist mythologies, based on certain false assumptions concerning Semites, Aryans and other groups, became very popular during the 19th century, when they provided, for those who needed it, an ideological justification for rejecting Jews, to replace the religious rationalization which was ceasing to satisfy secularized Christians. If Jews could no longer decently be persecuted because they were unbelievers, then they might be persecuted because they were members of an alien and inferior race. Religious prejudice was old-fashioned and obscurantist; racial discrimination in contrast appeared, to the 19th century, as modern and scientific.

What then is the relevance of all this to the Arab-Israel dispute?

Jews and pro-Jews have often tended to identify enmity to Israel or to Zionism with anti-Semitism, and to see Nasser as a new but unsuccessful Hitler and the Fatah as the present-day equivalent of the S.S. This is a false equation. The Arab-Israel conflict is a political one -- a conflict between peoples over real issues, not a matter of prejudice and persecution. It is not necessary to assume that Arab hostility to Israel is a result of anti-Semitism -- there are other adequate reasons by which it can be explained.

Nevertheless, since Israel happens to be a Jewish state inhabited largely by Jews, and since there are people who hate Jews independently of the Palestine conflict, anti-Semitism may sometimes be a factor in determining attitudes -- on occasion even in determining policy and action. How far and in what circumstances is this so?

The first and most important of the opponents of Israel are obviously the Arabs. In general it is true that the Arabs are not anti-Semitic -- not because they themselves are Semites, a meaningless statement, but because for the most part they are not Christians. Anti-Semitism in its modern form is the response, of the secularized Christian to the emancipated Jew -- but with theological and psychological roots going back to the very origins of Christianity.

The spread of anti-Semitism in the Arab lands in modern times has been due to three main causes. The first, chronologically, is European influence. A few Arabic translations of anti-Semitic tracts were published as early as the 19th century. Others followed, including the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which first appeared in Arabic in Cairo in about 1927. There are now more versions and editions in Arabic than in any other language. There are also numerous other works, translated, adapted, and even original, dealing with the iniquities of the Jews through the millennia and the universal Jewish conspiracy against mankind, and including the old charges of blood-lust, ritual murder and the like, as well as the standard modern myths of power and money. There are even writings which defend and justify the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Some contemporary Arab comment on the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem is significant in this respect.

The second factor is the Palestine question. As we have seen, Arab hostility to Israel has in its origins nothing to do with anti-Semitism as such. But Israel is Jewish, and there are Jewish minorities in Arab countries. In a time of crisis, the ready-made themes, imagery and vocabulary of anti-Jewish abuse that were offered to the Arabs proved too tempting to resist.

The reaction against Zionism and the response to European anti-Semitism both had their effect. But what finally sealed the fate of the Arab Jews was the third, and in many ways the most important, factor -- the general worsening of the position of minorities, both ethnic and religious, in the Middle East. In a time of violent change, the old tolerance has gone, the new equality has proved a fraud. All are insecure, some are persecuted -- and the Jews, as so often, suffer in an acute and accelerated form the ills of the society of which they are a part.

From the outpouring of official and private anti-Semitic propaganda in Arabic -- not only in books, but also in newspapers, magazines, films, radio and television -- one might gather that the Arabs were going through a wave of anti-Semitism similar to that of the Nazi period. Such an impression would be mistaken. Unlike German anti-Semitism, or that of Poland or Russia, this anti-Semitic literature in the Arab countries does not rest on any real popular feeling, and has no roots in the past; indeed, it is doubtful whether one can really speak, even now, of anti-Semitism among Muslim Arabs -- though of course there are always exceptions. Even across the battle lines, personal relations are still possible between Jews and Arabs, of a warmth and sincerity inconceivable to many Westerners. The anti-Semitic literature is overwhelmingly foreign in content and style -- even the anti-Jewish cartoons have to use German and Russian stereotypes. In the Arab lands anti-Semitism is not, as in Europe, exploited by politicians, but is created by them. It has, so to speak, been switched on; it could as easily be switched off.